Syllabus

Grading, Assignments, and Late Policy

Grading

The approximate grade breakdown is as follows:

• Homeworks: 60%

• Quizzes: 30%

• Lecture: 10% (but see "90% is 100%")

Lectures have a variety of before- and in-class activities submitted via Gradescope; these activities can be submitted asynchronously (eg, if you are re-watching the lectures after class). If you choose to submit your activities asynchronously, you will have approximately ~36 hours to do so. For this component, you will receive credit for completing the activity (ie, your answer can be incorrect); furthermore, the "90% is 100%" policy means that you will receive full credit for this category as long as you participate in 90% of the offered activities. For example, you will receive full lecture points if you complete 81 out of the ~90 questions asked during the quarter.

Participation and citizenship can be tricky to grade equitably, so we do not attempt to do so. If we notice truly above-and-beyond citizenship (eg, usually high engagement with the Ed discussion board, helping teaching staff debug homeworks) then we may boost your grade if and only if your grade was borderline (eg, you were at the border of 3.3 and 3.4). In Hannah's experience, only ~5-10% of students are at the borderline and substantially fewer of them meet the "above and beyond" criteria. In short: please help fellow students and staff because it's the right thing to do and because it helps your learning, not because it'll help your grade.

Homeworks

We will have 8 homeworks this quarter, offered approximately every week. Each homework will require some programming, and the tools we will use are:

• SQLite

• SQL Server on Windows Azure (Microsoft's Web Service)

• Java

• Amazon EC2

• Spark

• AsterixDB

• Neo4j (HW8 cancelled)

Homeworks must be completed individually (ie, without collaboration). They are due at 10pm, UW time.

Quizzes

We will have 5 quizzes this quarter, offered approximately every other week. Each quiz will be released on Gradescope, and you will have no more than 2 hours, at a time of your choice within the subsequent ~48h, to complete it . Because we will not be able to prevent cheating, we encourage unlimited collaboration: specifically, quizzes are open-book and can be done in groups of unlimited size (however, we've noticed that grades decrease when groups exceed 5 students in size). Each person must submit their own quizzes individually and disclose with whom they worked.

To understand what activities constitute "cheating", please see our collaboration policy below.

Late Policy

There are absolutely no late submissions accepted for quizzes or lecture activities. Since both are offered via Gradescope, we encourage you to incrementally save your work.

For homework assignments, you are allowed a total of 6 late days. A "late day" is defined as the 24-hour period after a due date: num_late_days = ceil(hours_late/24). Think of late days as an optional tool for managing your time; if CSE 344 were your only class, you wouldn't need it. In recognition of this fact, unused late days have no impact on your grade at the end of the quarter. On the other hand, if you exceed the late days afforded to you, you will lose 20% off your score for each day a homework is overdue. Regardless of how many late days you have remaining, no homework will be accepted after 2 days have elapsed.